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Scotch Barley Broth

A beef broth with Scotch barley, vegetables, and fowl, simmered and seasoned with herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Scotch Barley Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Boil the beef in 3 gallons of water with sliced carrot and crust of bread until reduced to half.

  2. Strain the broth and return it to the pot.

Add the vegetables and barley

  1. Add Scotch barley, celery, sweet herbs, onion, minced parsley, and marigolds.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the large fowl and boil until the broth is flavorful.

  2. Season with salt, remove onion and herbs, and serve with the fowl in the center.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Carrot + barleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together784 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Beef
Releases flavor and gelatin into the water as it simmers, giving the broth body.
Scotch barley
Swells as it cooks, thickening the broth and adding a chewy texture.
Large fowl
Adds rich meat flavor to the broth while it boils.
Celery
Contributes savory aroma and subtle flavor to the broth.

The step that matters

Reducing the beef broth by half. Simmering concentrates flavor as water evaporates, but boiling too hard can make the broth cloudy and greasy. A gentle, steady simmer gives a clearer, more balanced result.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, bread, barley, celery, parsley):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, bread, barley, celery, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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